Holding Lenin

C Abstract: Current reactivations of dialectical materialism often involve C

R R
I interpretations of Hegel and/or Marx guiding by benefits of hindsight I
S provided by contemporary Continental metaphysics. However, between S
I I
Hegels and Marxs nineteenth century, on the one side, and the early

Together:
S S
twenty-first century of present materialisms, on the other side, there
& &
lie the Russian/Soviet dialectical materialisms indebted to Engels as
C well as Hegel and Marx. Especially for any reactivation of dialectical C

Hegelianism and
R R
I
materialism that takes seriously the interlinked Naturphilosophie, I
T dialectics of nature, and philosophy of science crucial to the Soviets, T
I revisiting this neglected history promises to be of philosophical as I
Q Q
well as historical interest. Herein, I advance several connected theses:

Dialectical
U U
E Starting with Plekhanov, Russian/Soviet Marxists are right to recognize E

/ in Hegels absolute idealism numerous components crucial for a quasi- /

naturalist materialism; Lenins break with Plekhanov is more political
Volume 4 / Volume 4 /

Materialism
Issue 1 than philosophical, with the former never ceasing to be influenced by the Issue 1
dialectical materialism of the latter; Relatedly, Lenin is consistently both
a dialectician and a materialist, with there being no pronounced break
separating the Engelsian-Plekhanovite materialism of 1908s Materialism

A Historical Excursus
and Empirio-Criticism from the Hegelian dialectics of 1914s Philosophical
Notebooks; Apropos Bukharin, by contrast, there indeed is a pronounced
break between the mechanistic Historical Materialism of 1921 and the
dialectical Philosophical Arabesques of 1937; Finally, the theoretical
dimensions of Stalins Thermidor can be seen with clarity and precision
against the preceding historical background. I conclude by drawing
from the Plekhanov-Lenin-Bukharin-Stalin sequence lessons for todays

Adrian Johnston
Hegelian dialectical materialists.

Keywords: Hegel, Plekhanov, Lenin, Bukharin, dialectics, materialism,

naturalism

Between Friedrich Engels himself, on the one hand, and recent

reactivations of the tradition of dialectical materialism, on the other
hand, there lies a now almost entirely neglected and forgotten tradition
of (post-)Engelsian Naturdialektik: the Russian-then-Soviet furtherances
of dialectical materialist philosophies of nature and the natural sciences,
starting in the late nineteenth century with some of Georgi Plekhanovs
contributions (I deal with dialectical materialism la Mao Tse-Tung, the
other major non-Western strand of this orientation, in the first volume of
my Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism1). For theoretical as well as

1 Johnston 2013, pp. 23-28

160 161 Holding Lenin Together...

historical reasons, assessing the contemporary significance of a Hegel-
inspired materialist dialectics requires doing intellectual justice to the
dialectical materialism of non-Western Marxism. On my reading, V.I.
Lenins philosophical interventions with respect to both materialism and
dialectics represent the most decisive developments for a dialectics of
nature within the Russian/Soviet contextand this both because of these
interventions inherent philosophical qualities as well as because of the
effective canonization of Lenin, including of such works as Materialism
and Empirio-Criticism, in the Soviet Union. However, in addition to
Plekhanov and Lenin, I will discuss a range of other relevant figures,
including, most notably, Nicolai Bukharin and J.V. Stalin.
My critical examination of Plekhanov will focus on a relatively early
text in conjunction with a later one: 1891s For the Sixtieth Anniversary
of Hegels Death and 1908s Fundamental Problems of Marxism (the latter
being Plekhanovs last major theoretical work). The extended essay of
1891, a piece commemorating the life and thought of the towering giant of
post-Kantian German idealism (as its title clearly announces), enables
me to situate Plekhanovs perspectives on historical and dialectical
materialism in relation to Hegelian, Marxian, and Engelsian ground. His
1908 summation of the philosophical foundations of Marxism permits an
enhanced appreciation of these perspectives from the vantage point of
the end of his career.
Neither Plekhanovs political radicalism nor his qualified
Hegelianism emerge ex nihilo within nineteenth-century Russia. As
Guy Planty-Bonjour nicely and carefully documents in his 1974 study
Hegel et la pense philosophique en Russie, 1830-1917, such forerunners
as Vissarion Grigorevi Belinskij, Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen, Nikolaj
Vladimirovi Stankevi, Timofey Nikolayevich Granovsky, and Mikhail
Alexandrovich Bakunin pave the way for much of what is involved in
Plekhanovs Marxist syntheses of Hegelianism with materialism. In
addition to these domestic predecessors as well as the profound foreign
influence of Karl Marx, Plekhanov is deeply indebted to Engels, including
the author of Dialectics of Nature, Anti-Dhring, and Ludwig Feuerbach and
the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy (i.e., precisely the Engels
defending a Naturdialektik). In fact, Plekhanovs quite Engelsian rendition
of dialectical materialism is the key link bridging between Engelss and
Lenins connected philosophical positionsand this despite the political
rift that opened between Plekhanov and Lenin in the early 1900s as well as
Lenins complaints about Plekhanovs allegedly inadequate appreciation
of G.W.F. Hegel and Hegelian dialectics. One finds in the philosophical
writings of Plekhanov a quasi-Hegelian materialism anticipating what
later arises in and through the combination of Lenins Materialism and
162 Holding Lenin Together...
C Empirio-Criticism with his Philosophical Notebooks. C
R R
I Near the beginning of For the Sixtieth Anniversary of Hegels I
S Death, Plekhanov remarks that, the most consistent materialist will S
I I
S not refuse to admit that each particular philosophical system is no more S
than the intellectual expression of its time.2 Of course, this is an obvious
& &
endorsement of the Hegel who, in the deservedly renowned preface to
C 1821s Elements of the Philosophy of Right, asserts that, each individual C
R R
I
is a child of his time.3 Plekhanov considers this to be a proto-Marxian I
T historical materialist thesis, given historical materialisms emphases T
I on superstructural phenomena, up to and including philosophy itself, as I
Q Q
U arising from and remaining grounded by their time-and-place-specific U
E infrastructural bases. However, he proceeds, later in For the Sixtieth E
/ Anniversary of Hegels Death, to play off historical materialism against /
a feature of Hegels 1821 preface closely related to this child of his time,
Volume 4 / Volume 4 /
Issue 1 namely, the (in)famous Owl of Minerva. Following Engels especially, Issue 1
Plekhanov protests that post-Hegelian historical materialism, unlike
Hegelian philosophy and contrary to Hegels assertions embodied by the
Owl of Minerva, enjoys a foresight with predictive power as regards the
future.4
Not only does Plekhanov (as does Lenin too) take over from Engels
the narrative about the history of philosophy being organized around the
battle lines between the two great camps of idealism and materialism
he likewise knowingly inherits Engelss ambivalence about Hegel, an
ambivalence manifest in placements of Hegels philosophy as straddling
the contested border between idealist and materialist territories. As
does Engels, so too does Plekhanov repeatedly deploy variations on
Marxs distinction between the rational kernel and the mystical shell
within Hegelianism.5 Echoing Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of
Classical German Philosophy in particular,6 he asserts that, As long as
Hegel remains true to the dialectical method, he is a highly progressive
thinker7 and that, The dialectical method is the most powerful scientific
weapon bequeathed by German idealism to its successor, modern
2 Plekhanov 1974, p. 457
3 Hegel 1991, p. 21
4 Plekhanov 1974, pp. 475, 478-479; Johnston 2017 [forthcoming]
5 Wetter 1958, p. 397
6 Engels 1941, pp. 11-13, 24)
7 Plekhanov 1974, p. 477
163 Holding Lenin Together...
materialism.8 Once freed from its mystic wrappings,9 the Hegelian
dialectic, in and through historical and dialectical materialism, can and
does realize its revolutionary potential (with both Engels and Plekhanov
equating, as regards Hegels philosophy, dialectics with this philosophys
rational kernel and its purported idealism with its mystical shell).
Plekhanov, while paying Hegel the backhanded compliment of being
the most systematic of idealists, nonetheless contends that, despite
Hegels impressive systematicity, his idealism still remains plagued
by inconsistencies.10 In Plekhanovs view, these inconsistencies are
symptomatic of that fact that, materialism is the truth of idealism.11
However, this leads him to an immanent critique of Hegel according
to which Hegels alleged idealist inconsistencies are such as to lead
into this idealisms auto-dialectical, self-sublating transformation into
Marxian materialism.12
A few other features of Plekhanovs materialist evaluations
of Hegel in For the Sixtieth Anniversary of Hegels Death warrant
notice here. First of all, Plekhanov displays an acute awareness of the
significant difference, often overlooked by Hegels critics, between
subjective and objective/absolute idealisms (so too does the Lenin
of the Philosophical Notebooks, as will be observed below shortly).
He stresses that the idealism of Hegel is not, by contrast with that of
Immanuel Kant, subjectivist.13 Likewise, and in relation to the infamous
Doppelsatz from the preface to 1821s Elements of the Philosophy of
Rightthis is the notorious thesis according to which What is rational
is actual; and what is actual is rational (Was vernftig ist, das ist wirlich;
und was wirklich ist, das ist vernnftig)14Plekhanov praises Hegel for
rendering die Vernunft immanent to die Wirklichkeit, with this realism
of reason proposing that human history as well as material nature are
knowable thanks to being objectively structured in rational ways in and of
themselves.15
Additionally, this Plekhanov of 1891 endorses certain features of
8 Ibid., p. 477)
9 Ibid., p. 478)
10 Ibid., p. 463)
11 Ibid., p. 468)
12 Ibid., p. 468
13 Ibid., p. 473
14 Hegel 1970, p. 24; Hegel 1991, p. 20
15 Plekhanov 1974, p. 482
164 Holding Lenin Together...
C the historical and economic dimensions of Hegels Geistesphilosophie. C
R R
I He approvingly highlights the recognition by Hegel of the problems and I
S challenges posed by the rabble (Pbel).16 Moreover, he maintains S
I I
S that Hegels recourses to economics (i.e., political economy) help S
open up paths towards historical materialism proper (Plekhanov here
& &
foreshadows the Georg Lukcs of 1938s The Young Hegel).
C Two points in For the Sixtieth Anniversary of Hegels Death C
R R
I
recur in Fundamental Problems of Marxism. First, both texts credit I
T HegelFor the Sixtieth Anniversary of Hegels Death also credits T
I Schelling with this toowith forging a compatibilist resolution of I
Q Q
U the freedom-determinism antinomy as subsequently taken up by U
E Engels in particular17 (I have dealt with Engelss supposedly Hegelian E
/ compatibilism elsewhere18). Second, Plekhanov, in both 1891 and 1908, /
contrasts Hegelian models of historical development with the (pseudo-)
Volume 4 / Volume 4 /
Issue 1 evolutionist gradualisms associated, within turn-of-the-century Marxism, Issue 1
with the Second International and Menshevism. Basing himself on the
Hegelian logical dialectics of quality and quantity (as does Engels before
him and Lenin after him), he reasonably argues that, for Hegel, there is
revolution qua sudden and abrupt leaps as well as evolution qua slow and
steady progress19 (incidentally, this argument of Plekhanovs indicates
he is not quite so guilty of the total neglect of Hegels logical dialectics
with which Lenin sometimes charges him20). In the notes on Fundamental
Problems of Marxism taken by Lenin, he places a NB (nota bene) next to
Plekhanovs stressing of the revolutionary in addition to the evolutionary.21
Planty-Bonjour, speaking of Plekhanov and Lenin,22 suggests that, The
opposition between the two men is more political than philosophical.23
Fundamental Problems of Marxism also maintains that the
combination of Hegel with Ludwig Feuerbach is the key to understanding
Marx and Engels.24 For Plekhanov, Feuerbachs prioritization of being
16 Ibid., p. 471-472; Hegel 2002, p. 99; Hegel 1979, pp. 170-171; Hegel 1991, 244-246 pp. 266-268], 248 pp.
269;
Hegel 1999, pp. 255-256; Johnston 2017.
17 Plekhanov 1974, pp. 476-477; Plekhanov 1969, pp. 90-92, 143-144, 146
18 Johnston 2017.
19 Plekhanov 1974, p. 480; Plekhanov 1969, p. 45
20 Lenin 1976, pp. 357, 360
21 Ibid., p. 404
22 Planty-Bonjour 1974, pp. 272-273
23 Ibid., p. 273
24 Plekhanov 1969, p. 25
165 Holding Lenin Together...
over thinking in his critique of Hegels allegedly idealist privileging of
thought is a crucial precondition for Marxist post-Hegelian materialism25
(likewise, in his notes on Engelss Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of
Classical German Philosophy, he appeals to the histories of pre-human
and pre-organic nature so as to argue, long before Quentin Meillassoux,
that, Idealism says: without a subject there is no object. The history of
the earth shows that the object existed long before the subject appeared,
i.e., long before any organism appeared which had any perceptible
degree of consciousness26). On Plekhanovs assessment, not only is
this specific Feuerbachian criticism fully justifiedhe adds a reiteration
of the old charge of teleology according to which Hegelian Universal
Spirit dictates that reality conform to a (quasi-)secular theodicy.
Plekhanov contrasts this to a non-teleological modern dialectical
materialism.27
Volume 4 /
However, both implicitly and explicitly, this same Plekhanov of
1908 continues to praise Hegel despite objections raised to his absolute
idealism. Hegelian dialectics permits a proper appreciation and grasp
of the complex reciprocal interactions and immanent antagonistic
negativities within societies between their infrastructures and
superstructures28 (Plekhanov is here anything but a crude mechanical
economic reductionist). Additionally, Hegels dialectical philosophy
facilitates navigating between the opposed one-sided extremes of
theories of history emphasizing the agency of either great men
or anonymous structures.29 Furthermore, Plekhanov characterizes
Kantianisms as the principal bulwark in the struggle against
materialism.30 Hence, Hegels devastating critiques of Kant can and
should be enlisted in the service of the struggle for materialism.31 Finally,
Fundamental Problems of Marxism voices historical materialist approval
of Hegels acknowledgment (at the end of the introduction to his lectures
on the Philosophy of World History32) of the importance of geographical
forces and factors at the contingent, factical basis of the trajectories of
25 Feuerbach 2012, p. 168; Plekhanov 1969, pp. 28, 30-31, 45, 83
26 Plekhanov 1974, p. 519
27 Plekhanov 1969, p. 110
28 Ibid., pp. 52, 64, 71; Plekhanov 1974, pp. 488-489
29 Plekhanov 1969, p. 149; Plekhanov 1974, p. 525
30 Plekhanov 1969, p. 90, 97
31 Plekhanov 1974, pp. 512-514
32 Hegel 1956, pp. 79-102
166 Holding Lenin Together...
C human history.33 C
R R
I Consistent with Planty-Bonjours above-quoted assertion of I
S philosophical proximity, despite political distance, between Plekhanov S
I I
S and Lenin, I would contend that the formers Engelsian synthesis of S
Hegelian absolute idealism with Marxian historical materialism is the
& &
direct Russian forerunner of Leninist dialectical materialism.34 Standard
C Soviet wisdom came to have it that Lenins materialism is to be found C
R R
I
in 1908s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and his dialectics in the I
T Philosophical Notebooks of 1914.35 Indeed, and as I will show in what T
I follows, texts by Lenin directly addressing philosophical concerns from I
Q Q
U 1913 onward reveal that the Soviet construal of his dialectical materialism U
E is not inaccurate. E
/ However, a number of non-Soviet Marxists/leftists have challenged /
the official Soviet equation according to which Lenins dialectical
Volume 4 /
Issue 1 materialist philosophy equals Materialism and Empirio-Criticism plus the Issue 1
Philosophical Notebooks. One of Western Marxisms trademark tactics
is to play off a good Marx against a bad Engels (with these maneuvers
often resembling the psychoanalytic defense mechanism of splitting
la Kleinian object-relations theory). In line with this tactical template,
many Western Marxists likewise separate a bad Materialism and Empirio-
Criticism (guilty of the crudeness of Engelsian-Plekhanovite materialism
and naturalism) from a good Philosophical Notebooks (perceived as
closer to the [quasi- or pseudo-]Hegelianisms of non-Marxist theoretical
currents on the European Continent of the twentieth century). Regarding
the Lenin of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Helena Sheehan remarks,
Not surprisingly, most of the authors hostile to Engels are equally hostile
to Lenin and speak of him in the very same terms.36
Planty-Bonjour detects tensions between Lenins key philosophical
texts of 1908 and 1914.37 Other non/anti-Soviet authors go further. The
Maurice Merleau-Ponty of Adventures of the Dialectic issues an early-
Lukcs-inspired condemnation of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism38
(the later Lukcs, in 1947s Existentialisme or marxisme?, already objects
to the narrative according to which Lenins emphases on materialism
33 Plekhanov 1969, p. 49
34 Jordan 1967, p. 208
35 Bukharin 2005, pp. 307, 328, 337, 372; Planty-Bonjour 1967, pp. 29, 79, 91, 98
36 Sheehan 1993, p. 141
37 Planty-Bonjour 1974, p. 317
38 Merleau-Ponty 1973, pp. 59-65, 67
167 Holding Lenin Together...
eclipse dialectics in his thinking39and this in addition to his public
damning of Merleau-Ponty following the publication, in 1955, of
Adventures of the Dialectic40). Henri Lefebvre advocates abandoning
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism in favor of the Philosophical Notebooks
alone.41 Michael Lwy tries to stress philosophical as well as political
differences between Plekhanov and a later Lenin said to have left behind
the allegedly stupid materialism of 1908 under the beneficial influence
of intelligent dialectical idealism42 (with, more recently, Stathis
Kouvelakis echoing some of Lwys assertions along these lines43). And,
Raya Dunayevskaya and her student Kevin Anderson devote gallons
of ink to driving a wedge repeatedly between a supposedly deplorable,
vulgar Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and a laudable, sophisticated
Philosophical Notebooks.44 An author less invested in these disputes,
historian David Joravsky, speaks of a greater emphasis on dialectics
in Lenins notes on Hegels Science of Logic than one can find in
Materialism and Empirio-criticism.45 Gustav Wetter similarly judges that,
Lenins Philosophical Notebooks represent an advance, philosophically
speaking, on his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and show how
thoroughly he had grasped the nature of dialectic.46
Lefebvre, Lwy, Kouvelakis, Dunayevskaya, Anderson et al, in
playing off the Philosophical Notebooks against Materialism and Empirio-
Criticism, presuppose that the absolute idealism of Hegelian dialectical-
speculative philosophy is anti-realist and anti-naturalist. They also posit
that 1914 marks a sharp break in Lenins philosophical itinerary (akin to
the thesis of the alleged 1845 break in Marxs development associated
with classical, mid-1960s Althusserianism47). Treatments by me of Hegel
elsewhere48 already go a long way towards fundamentally undermining
the picture of Hegelian thought presupposed by Lefebvre and company
39 Lukcs 1961, pp. 251-252
40 Lukcs 1956, pp. 158-159
41 Lefebvre 1971, p. 229
42 Lwy 1973, pp. 132-133, 139-140, 142; Lwy 1973, pp. 151, 153-154
43 Kouvelakis 2007, pp. 173-175, 187-189
44 Dunayevskaya 1973, pp. 95-120, 204; Dunayevskaya 2002, pp. 50, 69, 105, 167, 214-215, 217, 251;
Anderson, 1995, pp. 4, 14, 23, 40, 42, 58-60, 64-65, 78-81, 95, 102-103, 174-175; Anderson 2007, pp. 125-127
45 Joravsky 1961, p. 20
46 Wetter 1958, pp. 130-131
47 Johnston , 2018
48 Johnston 2017; Johnston 2018
168 Holding Lenin Together...
C (as well as many, many others). Apropos the positing of the Philosophical C
R R
I Notebooks as a sharp, abrupt rupture with Lenins pre-1914 philosophical I
S positions, I can begin by referring to Dominique Lecourt, one of Louis S
I I
S Althussers students. After glossing Lecourts work on this topic, I S
then will add further criticisms of attempts to quarantine Materialism
& &
and Empirio-Criticism in relation to the Philosophical Notebooks and
C associated later texts by Lenin. C
R R
I
Lecourt, in his 1973 study Une crise et son enjeu: Essai sur la I
T position de Lnine en philosophie (published in Althussers Theorie series T
I at Franois Maspero), adamantly opposes the by-then commonplace I
Q Q
U splitting of Lenin into crude materialist (1908) and subtle dialectician U
E (1914).49 On Lecourts reading of Lenins philosophical writings, the E
/ primacy/priority of being over thinking, a thesis central to Materialism /
and Empirio-Criticism,50 remains the ultimate load-bearing tenet of
Volume 4 / Volume 4 /
Issue 1 Lenins materialist philosophy throughout the entire rest of his career.51 Issue 1
According to Lecourt, a key aspect of Hegel valued by the later, 1914-and-
after Lenin (as well as valued by Engels52) is the sustained, multi-
pronged assault on the anti-realist subjectivism of Kants transcendental
idealism.53 That is to say, Lenin, in the Philosophical Notebooks and
elsewhere, is interested in a specifically materialist harnessing of
the Hegelian problematization of Kantian subjectivist anti-realism.54
By Lecourts lights, scientific crises of the sort motivating Lenins
1908 philosophical interventionas is well known, Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism is a response to the overthrow of Newtonian physics
and idealist attempts to capitalize philosophically on this scientific
upheavalare the underlying root catalysts for Lenins recourse to
Hegelian dialectics.55 Relatedly, Lecourt maintains that dialectics
always and invariably remains subordinated to materialismthis is
a materialism, moreover, indebted to and informed by the empirical,
experimental sciences of knowable natural objectivitiesin Leninist
dialectical materialism.56
49 Lecourt 1973, pp. 14-15
50 Lenin 1972, pp. 38-39, 50-51, 78-79, 86, 106, 167-168, 220, 270-272
51 Lecourt 1973, pp. 31-33; Pannekoek 2003, pp. 109-110; Graham 1972, p. 402
52 Engels 1975, p. 14
53 Lecourt 1973, p. 51, 55, 57-58, 61-62, 65-67
54 Wetter 1968, p. 121
55 Lecourt 1973, p. 98-102, 107
56 Ibid., p. 48
169 Holding Lenin Together...
 Incidentally, a younger, more traditionally Marxist Lefebvre (1957)
even goes so far as to defend Lenins reflection theory, one of the
elements of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism most despised by those
pitting the Philosophical Notebooks against this 1908 treatise. On
Lefebvres interpretation, the thesis that thinking reflects being is an
essential axiom for materialism as involving anti-dualist immanentism,
an immanentism according to which thinking is internal to and a moment
of being.57 Lefebvres then-comrade, French Communist Party (PCF)
philosopher Roger Garaudy, contemporaneously (1956) offers the same
defense of Leninist reflection58 (with a similar point already being alluded
to, also in the French Marxist context, by Trn Duc Thao [1951] apropos
dialectical materialism generally59). This 1957 Lefebvre also anticipates
certain of Lecourts points, especially those pertaining to the anti-
subjectivist objectivity of the dialectics of Hegels absolute idealism as a
Volume 4 /
foreshadowing of full-fledged materialism.60
Lecourts arguments against those who divide Lenins philosophical
works by setting the Philosophical Notebooks against Materialism
and Empirio-Criticism so as to dismiss the latter can and should be
supplemented by additional assertions. To begin with, whereas the post-
1914 Lenin has Materialism and Empirio-Criticism widely distributed in
official published form, he never sees fit to publish the Philosophical
Notebooks. This is not at all to say that what the later Lenin indeed does
publish disavows or shows no ties to the content of his 1914 commentary
on Hegels Science of Logic.
Instead, and as I will demonstrate below shortly, Lenins published
philosophy-related writings both contemporaneous with and subsequent
to the Philosophical Notebooks fuse the Engelsian-Plekhanovite, science-
shaped materialism of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism with Hegelian
dialectics. This runs contrary to the claims of Lwy, Dunayevskaya,
and associates, who, as noted above, contend that a break occurs
resulting in 1908s materialism being jettisoned altogether in favor of
1914s dialectics. I think the textual evidence suggests otherwise. As
Lenin himself indicates, the position he defends is called dialectical
materialism with good reason.61
Lenin, like Marx, Engels, and Plekhanov before him, knowingly takes
57 Lefebvre 1957, p. 130
58 Garaudy 1956, pp. 50, 60
59 Trn Duc Thao 1986, p. 172
60 Lefebvre 1957, p. 181, 183-185
61 Lenin 1972, p. 284
170 Holding Lenin Together...
C over and absorbs elements of pre-Marxian materialism.62 For all four of C
R R
I these militant materialists, although philosophical materialisms from the I
S ancient Greek atomists through Feuerbach problematically are lacking in S
I I
S historical and dialectical sensibilities, these materialisms nonetheless S
are crucial precursors making possible what eventually arises in the
& &
mid-to-late nineteenth century as historical/dialectical materialism
C proper. Moreoverthis again contests the thesis of a 1914 rupture C
R R
I
with the materialism of 1908the later Lenin encourages his comrades I
T to immerse themselves in close study of Plekhanovs philosophical T
I writings.63 I
Q Q
U I turn now to some of Lenins texts themselves. My focus in U
E what follows will be on facets of what could be called a dialectical E
/ naturalism operative within Lenins materialist philosophy. I already /
deal with Materialism and Empirio-Criticism along similar lines in the first
Volume 4 /
Issue 1 volume of my Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism.64 Here, I will offer Issue 1
selective interpretations of four particular texts by Lenin: The Three
Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913), Conspectus
of Hegels The Science of Logic (1914), On the Question of Dialectics
(1915), and On the Significance of Militant Materialism (1922).
As is well known, the triad referred to in the title The Three
Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism is none other than
German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism.65
This essay, roughly contemporaneous with the Philosophical Notebooks,
promptly goes on to insist that the philosophical core of Marxism is
a materialism indebted to its historical predecessors (including the
mechanical materialists of eighteenth-century France).66 For this Lenin,
Marxs main philosophical accomplishment is the synthesis of pre-
Marxian materialism with Hegel-inspired dialectics.67 What is more, this
1913 essay continues to invoke the motif of the two opposed, struggling
camps of idealism and materialism as per Engels, Plekhanov, and
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.68 Herein, Lenin associates idealism
62 Pannekoek 2003, p. 129
63 Lenin 1971, p. 27; Lenin 1975, p. 658; Lenin 1971, p. 660; Lenin 1922
64 Johnston 2013, pp. 13-38
65 Lenin 1975, p. 641
66 Ibid., pp. 641-642
67 Ibid., p. 641
68 Sheehan 1993, pp. 126-129
171 Holding Lenin Together...
with religion and materialism with science.69 Hence, a mere year before
the Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin continues to insist that Marxist
philosophy is, first and foremost, a natural-science-informed materialism.
But, what about the Philosophical Notebooks of 1914? As I already
indicated, my gloss upon these incredibly rich set of reflections on and
responses to Hegel by Lenin will be highly selective. Given my precise
purposes in the current context, I am interested particularly in the
place of naturalism in Lenins serious materialist engagement with the
speculative dialectics of the Science of Logic.
However, before turning to the naturalist dimensions of the
dialectical materialism characterizing the Philosophical Notebooks, I
once again feel compelled to highlight some additional details further
problematizing the thesis of Dunayevskaya et al positing a 1914 break by
Lenin with his pre-1914 philosophical positions (as espoused primarily
Volume 4 /
in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism). Those maintaining the existence
of this purported rupture consider Lenin circa 1908 as too wedded to
ostensibly bad qua crude/vulgar Engelsian and Plekhanovite ideas.
As I noted a short while ago, partisans of this supposed break rely upon
contentious assumptions about discontinuities between Hegel, on the
one hand, and both Engels and Plekhanov, on the other hand.
But, what is more, Dunayevskaya and her ilk, in holding up Lenins
Philosophical Notebooks as amounting to a purported split with his prior
Engelsian and Plekhanovite commitments, tend to ignore the obvious
continuities and overlaps between how Engels, Plekhanov, and Lenin
all critically yet sympathetically read Hegel. That is to say, Lenins
appreciations of Hegelian dialectics in 1914 partly echo those already
articulated by these two Marxist predecessors of his. Examples along
these lines in the Philosophical Notebooks include: approval of Hegels
emphasis on immanent self-development70; endorsement of absolute
idealisms critique of Kants anti-realist subjectivism specifically and
subjective idealisms generally71; praise of the Hegelian dialectic for
its multidimensional fluidity and nimble dynamism72; agreement with
Hegels criticism according to which Kant, in his excessive tenderness
for things,73 refuses to recognize the ontological objectivity of
69 Lenin 1975, p. 641
70 Lenin 1976, p. 89
71 Ibid., pp. 91-93, 130, 168, 175, 183, 194, 196-197, 207
72 Ibid.,. pp.100, 110, 141, 224)
73 Hegel 1969, p. 237; Hegel 1991, 48 p. 92; Hegel 1955, p. 451
172 Holding Lenin Together...
C kinetic contradictions within real beings an sich74; reiteration that C
R R
I comprehending Marx requires comprehending Hegel75; and, crediting I
S Hegel with anticipating and making possible historical materialism.76 S
I I
S Insofar as the Hegel of the Philosophical Notebooks bears multiple S
resemblances to the Hegel of Engels and Plekhanov, this Lenin does
& &
anything but cleanly and completely separate himself here from the
C Engelsian and Plekhanovite influences shaping his thinking prior to 1914. C
R R
I
Immediately before turning to Hegels treatment of the category of I
T appearance in The Doctrine of Essence (i.e., the second of the three T
I major divisions of Hegelian Logik), Lenin declares, Continuation of the I
Q Q
U work of Hegel and Marx must consist in the dialectical elaboration of the U
E history of human thought, science and technique.77 As in 1908, so too E
/ in 1914: Science remains a crucial component of Leninist materialism, /
which seeks, following in Engelss footsteps, to dialecticize (the study
Volume 4 /
Issue 1 of) nature as well as the domains of humanitys ideas and activities Issue 1
(similarly, this Lenin of 1914 audibly echoes the Engels of Dialectics of
Nature, for better or worse, when he writes of not things, but the laws
of their movement, materialistically78). Soon after this just-quoted
declaration, Lenins naturalism begins to emerge even more explicitly
in the Philosophical Notebooks with his exclamation, Down with Gott,
there remains Natur.79 What is left after sweeping away narratives about
transcendent, top-down divine creation ex nihiloa little earlier in the
Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin insists that all emergences are out of
something instead of nothing80is immanent, bottom-up genesis starting
from the brute givenness of mere, sheer natural being(s) ultimately prior
to all sentience and sapience.81
Lenins agreement with Engelss and Plekhanovs praise for the
robust realism of Hegelian absolute idealism already involves Lenin
repeatedly recognizing that, for Hegel, logical categories are as much a
matter of objective-natural being as of subjective-human thinking.82 What
74 Lenin 1976, pp. 135-136, 228
75 Ibid., pp. 180, 211, 213
76 Ibid., pp. 189-191
77 Ibid p. 147
78 Ibid p. 94
79 Ibid, p. 155
80 Ibid., p. 133
81 Ibid., p. 171
82 Ibid pp. 91-93, 130, 175, 183, 196-199, 201, 222
173 Holding Lenin Together...
is more, the Philosophical Notebooks, despite the focus on the Science
of Logic, make a number of references to Hegels Naturphilosophie as
represented in the second volume of the Encyclopedia, the portion of
the System immediately succeeding Logic. On a single page, Lenin
emphasizes the Closeness to materialism of both this Philosophy of
Nature as well as the general Hegelian conception of substance as per
the movement from substantiality to subjectivity.83 And, despite Lenins
reservations regarding what he sees as the anti-materialist aspects of the
Hegelian narrative of the passing over from Logik to Naturphilosophie
Lenin even derides (Ha-ha!) what he takes to be Hegels account of the
transition from the logical Idea to real-philosophical Nature84Hegels
Logic-concluding identification of the Idea with Nature strikes Lenin as a
gesture that brings one within a hands grasp of materialism.85
Additionally, the Philosophical Notebooks express an appreciation
for the opposition of a speculative dialectics full of content and
concrete86 to empty formalism.87 Admittedly, this perhaps represents
an implicit criticism of an Engels who sometimes lapses into formalizing
generalizations about purportedly universal laws of dialectics.
Nonetheless, this Lenin of 1914 does not, for all that, abandon the
science-informed naturalism of Engelsian dialectical materialism (and,
behind that, Hegelian Naturphilosophie). Although he turns Hegels anti-
Schellingian denouncements of pseudo-mathematical formalisms in the
Philosophy of Nature against him,88 Lenin, like Hegel, denounces only
abstractly formalized Naturphilosophie, not Naturphilosophie tout court.
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism recurrently insists, in a good
naturalist-materialist manner, that the human central nervous system
is the highly organized matter forming the necessary natural basis for
consciousness, mindedness, etc.89 This 1908 insistence subsequently
is echoed in 1914 by a proposed inversion of what Lenin takes Hegels
views to beShould be inverted: concepts are the highest product
of the brain, the highest product of matter.90 I will put aside questions
83 Ibid p. 158
84 Ibid p. 174, 186
85 Ibid p. 233
86 Ibid. p. 232
87 Ibid p. 229
88 Ibid p. 183
89 Lenin 1972, p. 38-39, 43, 50-51, 61, 95, 238, 269-270
90 Lenin 1976, p. 167
174 Holding Lenin Together...
C regarding the accuracy of Lenins construal of Hegel here. That said, C
R R
I Lenin, in both 1908 and 1914, avoids lapsing into crudely reductive I
S materialism by adding to his neurobiological naturalism (as per his S
I I
S emphasis on the centrality of the central nervous system) what amounts S
to a greater emphasis on the dialectics of real abstractions. How so?
& &
At one point, the Philosophical Notebooks sharply contrast Kantian
C and Hegelian abstractions in favor of the latter.91 Soon after, Lenin C
R R
I
remarks in relation to Hegels introductory framing of the Science of Logic: I
T Is not the thought here that semblance also is objective, T
I for it contains one of the aspects of the objective world? Not only I
Q Q
U Wesen, but Schein, too, is objective. There is a difference between U
E the subjective and the objective, BUT IT, TOO, HAS ITS LIMITS.92 E
/ /
A subsequent passage from the Philosophical Notebooks reinforces
Volume 4 / Volume 4 /
Issue 1 this: Issue 1
The thought of the ideal passing into the real is profound:
very important for history. But also in the personal life of man it is
clear that this contains much truth. Against vulgar materialism.
NB. The difference of the ideal from the material is also not
unconditional, not berschwenglich.93
Through implicit recourse to the Hegelian-Schellingian dialectical-
speculative motif of the identity of identity and difference,94 Lenin
identifies nature as precisely the substantial identity between the
different dimensions of, on the one hand, ideal subjectivity (als Schein)
as abstract, phenomenon, and moment, and, on the other hand,
real objectivity (als Wesen) as concrete, essence, and relation.95
Very much in line with Hegels interrelated substance-also-as-subject
thesis and his Naturphilosophie, the Philosophical Notebooks posits a
substantial natural being that sunders itself into itself as objective nature
and its intimate other as subjective more-than-nature. Furtherthis
would be Lenins dialectics of real abstractions to which I referred a
moment agoLenin hypothesizes that substance-generated subjects
can and do really react back upon their generative substance. As per
91 Ibid., pg. 92
92 Ibid., pg. 98
93 Ibid., pg. 114
94 Ibid, p. 184
95 Ibid., p. 208
175 Holding Lenin Together...
vulgar materialism, appearances are mere appearances, with a one-way
trajectory of causality running from a material real to an epiphenomenal
ideal. As per dialectical materialism, by contrast, appearances are
themselves actual beings too, with a two-way dynamic of reciprocal
influences flowing back-and-forth between objective realities and
subjective idealities. For instance, brain-mind relations, by the lights of
Lenins dialectical materialism, are such that, although the mind (as ideal
subject) has as a necessary condition for its very existence the being of
the brain (as real object), the former can and does affect and shape the
latter.
Thanks to 1914s immersion in the work of Hegel, dialectical
themes and notions obviously are quite prominent in Lenins notes on
the Science of Logic.96 However, these themes and notions hardly are
new. Prior to the Philosophical Notebooks, Materialism and Empirio-
Criticism: One, opposes vulgar materialism in the name of properly
dialectical materialism97; Two, insists on the irreducible, full-fledged
ontological status of the ideal as well as the real98; And, three, advocates
dialecticizing the natural sciences, rather than trusting them to their
own non-dialectical devices.99 Lenins materialism in 1908 already is
dialectical (as is Engelss in, for example, Ludwig Feuerbach and the
Outcome of Classical German Philosophy,100 from which Lenin draws so
much inspiration). Lenins dialectic in 1914 still is materialist. Although
materialism is to the fore in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and
dialectic to the fore in the Philosophical Notebooks, this amounts to a
difference of emphasis rather than a shift of position. Before, during, and
after both 1908 and 1914, Lenin remains an Engels-inspired dialectical
materialist.
No fundamental rupture, including a sharp break with Engelsian
Naturdialektik, is inaugurated by the Philosophical Notebooks. The
thesis of a 1914 volte face, popular amongst Western Marxists, does not
hold water. If the contrasting Eastern/Soviet thesis, according to which
Lenins dialectical materialism equals Materialism and Empirio-Criticism
plus the Philosophical Notebooks, needs correcting, its flaw is that it risks
misleadingly suggesting that there is no dialectics in the first work and
no materialism in the second work. Of course, this (perhaps inadvertent)
96 Graham 1972, pp. 48-49
97 Lenin 1972, pp. 40-41, 285-286, 288-289, 291, 277-278
98 Ibid, pp. 238, 290, 292-293, 393-394
99 Ibid., p. 372
100 Engels 1941 pp. 25-27, 48-50; Wetter 1958, p. 300; Jordan 1967, p. 160
176 Holding Lenin Together...
C suggestion sets the stage for and plays into the hands of Dunayevskaya C
R R
I and company, whose disparagement of Lenins 1908 materialism and I
S celebration of Lenins 1914 dialectics leads to a dialectical materialism S
I I
S materialist in name only, being really devoid of any traces of materialism S
(as itself involving both naturalism and realism).
& &
At this juncture, I succinctly can address as a pair two of Lenins
C post-1914 texts, namely, 1915s On the Question of Dialectics and C
R R
I
1922s On the Significance of Militant Materialism. The first of these I
T essays contains audible echoes of the Philosophical Notebooks, coming T
I only a year after the latter. In 1915, Lenin continues both: one, to stress I
Q Q
U the ubiquity of dialectics (qua struggles between opposites101) in an U
E inherently, objectively dialectical nature-in-itself as well as in and E
/ between human beings102; and, two, to advance a dialectics giving pride /
of place to leaps ( la Hegels dialectics of quantity and quality103) and
Volume 4 / Volume 4 /
Issue 1 discord over gradualness and harmony.104 Issue 1
Along related lines, On the Question of Dialectics attributes
the materialist universalization of Hegelian dialectics to Marx himself,
claiming that, with Marx the dialectics of bourgeois society is only a
particular case of dialectics.105 Of course, this is tantamount, in line with
Plekhanov, to crediting Marx, apart from Engels, with forging a dialectical
materialism (implicitly including a potential Naturdialektik) as the general
theory of which historical materialism, as deployed in the capitalist-
era critique of political economy, is a special instance or application106
(in On the Significance of Militant Materialism Lenin hints again at
this same crediting107). Lastly, Lenin, in this 1915 piece, declares that,
Philosophical idealism is only nonsense from the standpoint of crude,
simple, metaphysical materialism.108 Essentially, this amounts to a
reminder of the central thrust of the first of Marxs eleven Theses on
Feuerbach, with Thesis Ones distinction between contemplative (as
ahistorical, crude, eliminative, mechanical, metaphysical, reductive,
simple, vulgar, etc.) and non-contemplative (i.e., historical and/or
101 Lenin 1976, p. 222; Wetter 158, p. 120; Graham 1972, p. 58-59
102 Lenin 1976, p. 357-358, 360
103 Lenin 1976, p. 123
104 Ibid., pp. 358, 360
105 Ibid., p. 359
106 Jordan 1967, pp. 359, 370
107 Lenin 1971, p. 665
108 Lenin 1976, p. 361
177 Holding Lenin Together...
dialectical) materialisms.109 Both Marx and Lenin lambast contemplative
materialisms without, for all that, ultimately endorsing those idealisms
contesting such flawed, limited materialisms. Although these idealisms
basic resistance is correct, these idealisms themselves are not. Put
in Lenins own phrasing, when it comes to idealism or contemplative
materialism, Both are worse!
1922s On the Significance of Militant Materialism, one of Lenins
final pronouncement on matters philosophical, seems further to vindicate
my preceding assertions about a consistent dialectical materialist
stance running from Materialism and Empirio-Criticism through the
Philosophical Notebooks and beyond (indeed, up through the last years
of Lenins life). As in both Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and 1913s
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, the Lenin
of 1922 once again invokes the conflict between science and religion, with
the Engelsian-Plekhanovite motif of the perennial war between the two
camps of materialism and idealism palpable in the background. For this
Lenin still, staunch materialism necessarily entails militant atheism.110
Moreover, On the Significance of Militant Materialism manifestly
returns to the main topic of central concern to the Lenin of Materialism
and Empirio-Criticism specifically: the rapport between the natural
sciences and philosophy, especially cases in which scientific crises and
upheavals are exploitatively capitalized on by idealisms in their perpetual
campaigns against materialisms. As in 1908, so too in 1922: Lenin
warns that rapid advances in and radical transformations of the natural
sciences threaten to inspire idealist philosophical efforts to undermine
materialist views, including the spontaneous materialism of practicing
natural scientists themselves.111 On the later Lenins evaluation, both
science and materialism need philosophical support in order to stand
up to and fend off reactionary idealist/spiritualist misappropriations
of scientific revolutions.112 Lenin associates the militant materialism
providing this vital support under the banner of Marxism (as per
the title of the journal, Pod Znamenem Marksizma, whose intellectual
and ideological mission is being addressed in On the Significance of
Militant Materialism) with a Society of Materialist Friends of Hegelian
Dialectics.113 But, again, instead of 1908s materialism or 1914s
109 Johnston 2018
110 Lenin 1971, pp. 661-662; Joravsky 1961, p. 36
111 Lenin 1971, p. 664-666; Wetter 1958, p. 256; Sheehan 1993, pp. 120-122, 132-135, 137
112 Lenin 1971, pp. 664-666
113 Lenin 1971, pp. 660-662, 665
178 Holding Lenin Together...
C dialectics, Leninism, in 1908, 1914, and 1922, sticks to dialectics and/with C
R R
I materialism, no more, no less. I
S I come now to the tragic figure of Bukharin. In particular, my S
I I
S concern will be with him at the very height of his tragedy, namely, with S
his Philosophical Arabesques, a 1937 text written in a prison cell by an
& &
already-condemned man awaiting execution. Bukharin, writing to his
C wife Anna Larina, says about Philosophical Arabesques that, The most C
R R
I
important thing is that the philosophical work not be lost. I worked on I
T it for a long time and put a great deal into it; it is a very mature work in T
I comparison to my earlier writings, and, in contrast to them, dialectical I
Q Q
U from beginning to end.114 U
E The self-assessment contained in Bukharins just-quoted remarks E
/ about Philosophical Arabesques arguably is quite accurate. Specifically, /
his prior theoretical magnum opus, 1921s Historical Materialism, indeed
Volume 4 / Volume 4 /
Issue 1 is far from thoroughly dialectical. In fact, this earlier work presents a Issue 1
rather non-dialectical codification of historical materialism bringing
the Bukharin of this period into association with a mechanist faction
of Soviet philosophy opposed to Abram Moiseyevich Deborin and his
followers (the Deborinites championing their version of Hegel as the
key to all the philosophical issues of concern in the Soviet context of the
1920s).115 In relation to the mechanist-Deborinite splitvarying accounts
of this split can be found in, for instance, Wetters Dialectical Materialism,
Joravskys Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, Jordans The Evolution
of Dialectical Materialism, and Sheehans Marxism and the Philosophy
of ScienceBukharins Historical Materialism indeed puts forward
a mechanistic rendition of Marxist materialism as a thoroughgoing
determinism of iron laws of causality completely governing non-human
nature and human social history alike.116
The Bukarin of 1937s Philosophical Arabesques clearly is a thinker
of significantly greater dialectical finesse than the 1920s fellow traveller
of the anti-Deborinite mechanists. Although I reject dividing the earlier
(circa 1908) from the later (circa 1914) Lenin, I affirm just such a division
between the earlier (circa 1921) and the later (circa 1937) Bukharin. My
treatment of Philosophical Arabesques first will highlight the continuities
between Lenins dialectical materialism and Bukharins final theoretical
positions. I then will underscore the conceptual innovations introduced
by Bukharin on the eve of his execution.
To begin with the topic of realist materialism (i.e., the top priority
114 Bukharin 2005, p. 17
115 Wetter 1958, pp. 142, 175
116 Bukharin 1969, pp. 19-52, 229
179 Holding Lenin Together...
of Lenin in 1908), Philosophical Arabesques emphasizes multiple times
that life, sentience, and sapience are all later emergent phenomena
preceded by an already-long-existent Real of inorganic, non-conscious
Natur an sich.117 Similarly, the naturalist dimension of Leninist dialectical
materialism shines through in Bukharins prison treatise. Lenins anti-
idealist, neurobiological emphasis on the brain as the material seat of
subjectivity (albeit subjectivity as dependent on but different from the
highly organized matter of the central nervous system) is echoed by
Philosophical Arabesques.118
Moreover, Bukharin observes, apropos the difference between
subjectivity and objectivity, that, This opposition to realit arose
historically when nature created and singled out from itself a new
quality, the human being, the subject, the historico-social subject.119
In other words, natural history immanently generates out of itself, in a
Volume 4 /
dialectical dynamic involving the Hegelian logic of quantity and quality,
the distinction between objective nature and subjective history/society120
(one of Bukharins descriptions of this process even audibly anticipates
contemporary talk about the anthropocene, with Burkarin speaking of
the anthropozoic period of the planet earth121). Bukharins natural
substance, like that of Hegel, Marx, and Engels, is self-sundering as
partially auto-denaturalizing. I say partially here because Bukharin, in
line with Engelsian-Leninist (qualified) naturalism, is careful to stipulate
that socio-historical mediations, although profoundly transforming
human nature and humanitys relations with non-human nature, never
bring about total denaturalization qua exhaustive liquidation of anything
and everything natural.122
In a chapter of Philosophical Arabesques devoted to the topic of
Teleology, Bukharin provides additional clarifications in connection
with what I just underlined. He states therein:
In humanity, nature undergoes a bifurcation; the subject,
which has arisen historically, stands counterposed to the object.
The object is transformed into matter, into the object of knowledge
and of practical mastering. A human being, however, represents
a contradiction, a dialectical contradiction; he or she is at one
117 Bukharin 2005, pp. 48, 60, 135, 241-243, 245
118 Ibid., pp. 140, 143
119 Ibid., p. 59
120 Ibid., p. 143
121 Ibid., p. 244
122 Ibid., p. 101
180 Holding Lenin Together...
C and the same time both an anti-member that is, a subject C
R R
I counterposed to nature, and a part of this nature, incapable of I
S being torn out of this universal, S
I I
S all-natural, dialectical relationship. When Hegel introduced S
his trinomial division into mechanism, chemism, and teleology,
& &
he in essence used idealist language to formulate (that is, if we
C read him materialistically, as Lenin advised) the historical stages C
R R
I
of development, of real development.123 I
T T
I Bukharin ends in this passage with a qualified endorsement of the I
Q Q
U fundamental categories (i.e., mechanism, chemism, and teleology) U
E of Hegels strong-emergentist Naturphilosophie construed as stages of E
/ natural history, of a nature exhibiting a historical series of categorial /
emergences.124 Putting aside for the moment Bukharins relations with
Volume 4 /
Issue 1 Hegel and Lenins (quasi-)HegelianismI will address these shortly Issue 1
the rest of the above quotation essentially suggests a dialectical
convergence of identities and differences between the natural and
the human. On the next page of the same chapter of Philosophical
Arabesques, Bukharin adds:
Dialectical materialism does not treat human beings as
machines; it does not deny special qualities, does not deny goals,
just as it does not deny reason. But dialectical materialism views
these special qualities as a link in the chain of natural necessity;
it views human beings in their contradictory duality as antagonists
of nature and as part of nature, as both subject and object, while
viewing the specific teleological principle as an aspect of the
principle of
necessity.125
As evidence elsewhere in this 1937 manuscript corroborates,126
Bukharins invocations of necessity here are of a piece with an
endorsement of Engelss purportedly Hegelian compatibilism127 according
to which, as Bukharin himself puts it (in connection with an appeal to
123 Ibid., p. 184
124 Thao 1986, p. 138
125 Bukharin 2005, p. 185
126 Ibid., p. 116-117
127 Engels 1959, pp. 157, 390-393
181 Holding Lenin Together...
Francis Bacons New Organon128), Freedom is cognized necessity.129
Plekhanov too, before Bukharin, already reaffirms this same Engelsian
compatibilism130 (I have critiqued this Engels on properly Hegelian
grounds elsewhere131). Additionally, Bukharins principle of necessity
arguably resonates specifically with the theme of causal lawfulness so
central to his earlier, 1920s version of Marxist materialism.
In addition to repeating Engelss pseudo-Hegelian compatibilism,
Bukharin also repeats a somewhat serious mistake made by Engels. The
latter at one point regrettably equates materialism with nominalism132
(thereby regressing to a Hobbesian ontologya couple pages later in
the same text, Engels refers to the British empiricists Bacon, Thomas
Hobbes, and John Locke as inspirations for the eighteenth-century
French materialism itself in turn inspiring Marx and himself too133).
Philosophical Arabesques likewise mentions a connection between
Volume 4 /
Marxism and nominalism.134
However, Bukharin, fortunately but inconsistently, also upholds
the anti-nominalist doctrine of real abstractions advanced by both
Marx and Lenin. Two echoes of Lenins version of this doctrine can be
heard in his 1937 text: one, theory is also a force when it seizes hold of
the masses135; and, two, the subjective cannot be treated as merely
subjective.136 These two statements can be rephrased respectively
as follows: One, the ideality of conceptual abstractions are non-
epiphenomenal qua causally efficacious in reality; Two, the realm of
the ideal is not simply unreal. For a nominalist ontology, the only true
existents are the perceptible immediacies of concrete spatio-temporal
particulars as irreducibly unique xs, as absolutely individuated
singularities; any categorial and conceptual generalities over and
above such xs are dismissed as mere names, as inefficacious, sterile
linguistic constructs and conventions lacking any real ontological
status or weight. For dialectical materialism (as well as transcendental
128 Bukharin 2005, p. 117
129 Ibid., p. 116
130 (Plekhanov 1974, pp. 476-477; Plekhanov 1969, pp. 90-92; Plekhanov 1969, pp. 143-144, 146
131 Johnston 2017
132 Engels 1975, p. 10
133 Ibid., p. 12
134 Bukharin 2005, p. 87
135 Bukharin 2005, p. 37
136 Ibid., p. 74
182 Holding Lenin Together...
C materialism137), categorial and conceptual generalities are far from C
R R
I epiphenomenal, instead being endowed with actual causal efficacy vis-- I
S vis nominalisms particulars. S
I I
S Picking back up the thread of the continuities between Lenins S
dialectical materialism and the late Bukharin, several more links between
& &
these two Bolsheviks surface in Philosophical Arabesques. In line with
C the Engelsian-Plekhanovite-Leninist motif of the recurrent struggles C
R R
I
between religious idealism and atheistic materialism, Bukharin speaks I
T of sweeping away religion and its dualist fetters.138 He also endorses T
I Lenins account according to which: First, dialectical materialism is the I
Q Q
U general theory behind Marxs historical materialism as an application U
E of this theory to social formations139; and, second, Marxs dialectical E
/ materialism is itself a synthesis of mechanistic materialism (from the /
Greek atomists, through the French materialists, and up to Feuerbach)
Volume 4 /
Issue 1 with dialectical idealism (as embodied by Hegelian philosophy)140 (with Issue 1
the Lukcs of 1954s The Destruction of Reason echoing this rendition of
Marxs dialectical materialism141).
I turn now to observing briefly the overlaps between Lenin and
Bukharin specifically apropos Hegel. An appreciation of Lenins
Philosophical Notebooks is largely responsible for Bukharins belated
conversion from a more mechanistic to a more dialectical materialism.142
Accordingly, endorsements and reiterations of this Lenin (and, implicitly
behind him, Plekhanov) abound throughout Philosophical Arabesques:
The realist-objective (i.e., anti-subjectivist) side of Hegelian absolute
idealism places it in close proximity to materialism143; The speculative
dialectics of absolute idealism must be taken as ontological and not
merely epistemological144; Various aspects of Hegels corpus distinguish
him as a proto-historical-materialist145; And, in line with a long-standing
tradition amongst Russian Hegelians and Marxists, there is celebration of
the dialectical dynamics of quantities and qualities, with their leaps, as
137 Johnston 2014a, pp. 57-61, 65-66, 73-78, 85, 96-97, 100-102, 123-124
138 Bukharin 2005, pp. 220-221
139 Ibid., p. 337
140 Ibid., p. 328
141 Lukcs 1981, p. 196
142 Bukharin 2005, pp. 325, 372
143 Ibid., pp. 57, 261, 304
144 Ibid., pp. 308-309
145 Ibid., pp. 114-116
183 Holding Lenin Together...
crystallizing the algebra of revolution (Herzen).146
But, what, if any, are the novel contributions made to the tradition of
dialectical materialism by Philosophical Arabesques? I discern several
in this text. To begin with, Bukharin tempers the apparent ahistoricism
of Engelss laws of Naturdialektik by stipulating that these laws are
historical, albeit on the longer time-scale of natural history.147 Hence,
these laws seem ahistorical only relative to the comparatively shorter
time-scales of human history.
Bukharin also addresses Hegels Naturphilosophie directly. He
faults Hegel for allegedly having regressed back behind Kant into a pre-
modern vision of nature as ahistorical (i.e., eternal, unchanging, static,
etc.).148 Bukharin charges that, in Hegels Philosophy of Nature, idealism
(as conservative and reactionary) sadly wins out over dialectics (as
progressive and revolutionary).149 Although I fundamentally disagree with
Bukharins characterization of Hegelian Naturphilosophie,150 Bukharin
admittedly is right to suggest that ongoing scientific developments
from Hegels time onward demand revising and reworking multiple
components of Hegels original Philosophy of Nature. Indeed, I agree
that transforming Naturphilosophie in response to the sciences is
an important process of recurrent theoretical labor for dialectical
materialism. But, Bukharin is wrong to suggest that Hegel himself would
be unready, unwilling, and/or unable to carry out such transformations
were he to be confronted with these scientific developments.
Apropos the natural sciences, Philosophical Arabesques makes
a couple of points worth noting. First of all, Bukharin denounces as
stupid, obtuse, and narrow-minded the gesture of reducing the sciences
to being social constructions through and through.151 Of course, there
are plenty of non-Marxist permutations of this maneuver. However,
he understandably is concerned with its Marxist variants, according
to which, on the basis of an economistic assumption about one-way
determination of superstructure by infrastructure, the sciences are
superstructural outgrowths of the economic base. Therefore, they are
peculiar to given social formations and, moreover, likely entangled with
the ideologies permeating superstructural phenomena. Precisely as
146 Ibid., p. 348
147 Ibid., p. 60
148 Ibid., pp. 134-135
149 Ibid., pp. 134-135
150 Johnston 2014b, pp. 204-237; Johnston 2018.
151 Bukharin 2005, pp. 217-218
184 Holding Lenin Together...
C a materialist, Bukharin cannot stomach the anti-naturalism and anti- C
R R
I realism of such a pseudo-Marxist philosophy of science. I
S Also apropos the empirical, experimental sciences of nature, S
I I
S Philosophical Arabesques ventures a tentative prediction about further S
development to come. Bukharin muses:
& &
in the future a whole series of solid conquests of science
C will be taken in different connections, considered from different C
R R
I
points of view, once these points of view have been developed; it I
T is absurd to think that in millions of years thought will be the same T
I as it is now. But a great deal of todays science will remain alive, I
Q Q
U as solid, eternal, and absolute acquisitions.152 U
E E
/ The crucial upshot of Bukharins reflections here is that one can /
acknowledge the shifting claims and findings of the sciences without, for
Volume 4 / Volume 4 /
Issue 1 all that, succumbing to an anti-realist skepticism about the entirety of Issue 1
their contents past and present. That is to say, just because the sciences
have changed and will change does not mean that each and every
determinate result put forward by them is doomed to total nullification
sooner or later in the future. For Bukharin, dialectical materialism proper
must shun such anti-naturalist epistemological pessimism as speciously
justifying deliberate neglect of the sciences.
Finally, Philosophical Arabesques contains an important warning
about the abuses of dialectics, a warning with which Hegel would
agree153 (even if Bukharin is unaware of this agreement). Bukharin
cautions that dialectics cannot and should not carelessly be generalized
into an unqualified theory of everything, namely, a circumscribed
set of universal laws equally applicable to even the smallest, most
commonplace things under the sun (he gives as examples of the
latter buttons, knives, forks, and steel ingots, ridiculing the notion of
a dialectic of buttons, for instance).154 Bukharins essential point is
that dialectics, accurately understood, does not dialecticize everything
without reserve or remainder. In other words, dialectics itself recognizes
differences between the dialectical and the non-dialectical, admitting
the existence of the latter (for Hegel, such non-dialectical dimensions as
Verstand and mechanical physics indeed are realities to be recognized as
such155). The Bukharin of 1937 ought to be recognized as perspicuously
152 Ibid., p. 281
153 Johnston 2017.
154 Bukharin 2005, p. 337
155 Johnston 2017
185 Holding Lenin Together...
discerning the need for a (meta-)dialectical balancing between the
dialectical and the non-dialectical.
Immediately on the heels of Philosophical Arabesques, Stalin
publishes in 1938, just months after having executed Bukharin, his
codification of Marxist philosophy. Stalins Dialectical and Historical
Materialism, articulating his diamat, promptly is imposed as official
doctrine within the Soviet spheres of Really Existing Socialism. Just
as Stalins liquidation of Bukharin is one of the incarnations of a
terrifying political Thermidor, so too is the succession of Philosophical
Arabesques by Dialectical and Historical Materialism a manifestation of a
philosophical Thermidor.
As is well known, Stalin eliminates Engelss dialectical law of
the negation of the negation. Of course, this specific elimination is a
theoretical symptom of the practical fact of the entrenchment of the
Volume 4 /
Stalinist bureaucratic state apparatus (with this dictatorship, as a [post-]
revolutionary negation of the tsarist state, refusing to contemplate
the possibility of itself being negated in turn by further revolutionary
developments).156 Stalin, in his last major philosophical statement
(on the topic of language and linguistics) from the start of the 1950s,
similarly adds caveats to the Hegelian-Engelsian dialectics of quantity
and quality. Implicitly at odds with Lenins (and Bukharins) emphatic
Bolshevik celebrations of the leaps of Hegels speculative-logical
algebra of revolution, Stalin argues against cumulative quantitative
changes always sooner or later catalyzing leap-like explosions. More
specifically, he suggests that, in terms of social transformations in
classless societies (with the Soviet Union circa 1950 largely having
achieved, according to Stalinist propaganda, the dissolution of classes),
the continuity of evolutions rather than the discontinuity of revolutions
will be the rule.157 Once again, the message is clear: There will be no
future explosive revolutionary negations of the status quo in the U.S.S.R.;
Stalinism is here to stay.
However, as per the clich even a broken clock is right at least
twice a day, Stalins rendition of Marxist materialism is not entirely
without its (admittedly unoriginal) merits qua select concurrences with
the prior philosophical efforts of Engels, Plekhanov, and Lenin. To begin
with, Stalins 1924 lectures on The Foundations of Leninism stress the
importance of theory (against anti-intellectualism, spontaneism, and the
like) and, in connection with this, indicate that theoretical concepts can
and do function as real abstractions by galvanizing and guiding mass-
156 Wetter 1958, p. 311
157 Stalin 1972, p. 27
186 Holding Lenin Together...
C scale socio-political projects (as practices, movements, revolutions, C
R R
I etc.).158 1938s Dialectical and Historical Materialism likewise implicitly I
S relies at points on the notion of real abstractions.159 Other features of S
I I
S diamat also echo the dialectical materialism of Stalins predecessors S
as discussed by me in the preceding: Both natural and human histories
& &
indeed are punctuated by sudden revolutions in addition to gradual
C evolutions160; The matter of Natur exists prior to and independently of C
R R
I
the Geist of humanity161; Marxism, with its materialism (especially as I
T carried forward by Engels and the Lenin of Materialism and Empirio- T
I Criticism), involves a Hegel-inspired scientific realism162; And, against I
Q Q
U mechanistic economism and related deviations, superstructures react U
E back upon infrastructures163 (an anti-deterministic thesis central to E
/ Western Marxists from Lukcs and Antonio Gramsci onward). Evidently, /
Stalin even resisted Trofim Denisovich Lysenkos attempted tethering of
Volume 4 /
Issue 1 sciences to classes, rebutting that mathematics and Darwinism, in their Issue 1
scientific universality, are independent of class bases164 (a point likewise
central to Stalins later rebuking of linguist Nicolai Marrs thesis that
languages are components of specific social superstructures165).
Yet, even these philosophical virtues borrowed by Stalin from
his Marxist predecessors manage to be perverted by him into political
vices. In particular, the theories of real abstractions and the downward
causation of superstructure vis--vis infrastructure are pressed into the
service of rationalizing a voluntarism, one in tension with core aspects
of historical materialism, of top-down governance by the enlightened
consciousnesses of the Party and its Leader.166 In general, Stalinist
diamat somehow manages the lamentable feat of a non-dialectical,
contradictory sandwiching together of a teleological determinism (as
per the combined laws of nature and history inexorably progressing
toward specific ends) with a spiritualistic voluntarism (as per exceptional
individuals, great men, playing guiding roles in various processes). I
158 Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism, Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975, pg. 19-23
159. Stalin 1940, pp. 22-23, 43-44
160 Ibid., pp. 8-9, 11-13
161 Ibid., pg. 15-16, 20
162 Stalin 1975, pp. 20-21; Stalin 1940, p. 17
163 Stalin 1940, pp. 22-23, 43-44
164 Pollock 2006, pp. 56-57, 59, 134
165 Stalin 1972, pp. 5-9, 25; Stalin 1972, pp. 33-35; Pollock 2006, pp. 104-135
166 Wetter 1958, pp. 216-217, 219-220
187 Holding Lenin Together...
neither pretend nor would be inclined to try to sort out the muddle of
conflicting theoretical elements forced together under the ferocious
pressure of Stalins unprincipled political opportunism.
As I noted a short while ago, the deletion of the negation of the
negation and the limitation of the dialectics of quantity and quality are
two hallmark philosophical features of the Stalinist Thermidor. Two other
such features, the first of which I refer to immediately above, surface
in Dialectical and Historical Materialism: one, the necessary, inevitable
progress of natural and social developments over the course of historical
time in an inexorable onward and upward movement167; two, the
association of dialectics with a perspective according to which, starting
with nature-in-itself, material realities are envisioned as continuously
evolving organic wholes of thoroughly interconnected parts.168 The
Stalinist (per)version of dialectical materialism promotes the necessities
Volume 4 /
of strong Nature and strong History as, taken together, a teleological
big Other or One-All (to resort to a hybrid of Lacanian and Badiouian
phrasings). By sharp contrast, transcendental materialism puts forward
the contingencies of weak nature and weak history as, taken together, an
aleatory barred Other or not-One/non-All. This difference comes down to
that between totalizing organicist (w)holism and its negation.
I want at this juncture to leave Stalin behind and circumnavigate
back to Marx and Lenin so as to bring the present intervention to a
fitting close. Apropos Marx and Lenin, Planty-Bonjour acknowledges
that both are committed to an ultimately naturalist basis for historical
and/or dialectical materialism.169 However, he expresses some worries
and reservations about this naturalism. In his book The Categories of
Dialectical Materialism, Planty-Bonjour remarks:
although human activity explains the dialectical bond
between man and nature, it says nothing about the origins of
nature. It is too easy to say that Marx did not take the question
up. Do we not find in Marx the famous text on the rejection of the
idea of creation? And it is precisely there that he takes an openly
naturalist position to defend and justify the ontological primacy
of material being, in order to invalidate a recourse to God the
creator.170
167 Stalin 1940, pp. 8-9, 11-13
168 Ibid. pp. 7-8
169 Planty-Bonjour 1967, p. 96; Planty-Bonjour 1974, p. 288
170 Planty-Bonjour 1967, p. 96
188 Holding Lenin Together...
C Several things ought to be said in response to these comments. To C
R R
I begin with, insofar as Marxist materialism insists upon the chronological I
S as well as ontological priority of being over thinking, it would not and S
I I
S could not have any intention of trying to account for the origin of nature S
via human praxis. For Marx, as both a materialist and an admirer of
& &
Charles Darwin, any attempt along these lines would be an idealist
C inversion of reality, since, in fact, humanity emerges from nature and C
R R
I
not vice versa. The human and humanizing dialectics of laboring arises I
T out of a physical, chemical, and organic nature as a relatively recent T
I development in evolutionary history. I
Q Q
U Furthermore, not only is there a close link between materialism and U
E naturalism, including for Marxist materialism(s)naturalist materialism E
/ also is intimately associated with atheism too. To state the obvious, /
as a materialist, one must exclude the possibility of an immaterial,
Volume 4 /
Issue 1 transcendent cause for real existence (such as a monotheistic God). Issue 1
And, as a naturalist materialist, one also must exclude the possibility of
humans creating nature (insisting instead upon the opposite). Hence,
Marx (and those following him, such as Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, and
Bukharin) is compelled to deny that either divine or anthropomorphic
agency constitutes the origins of nature, as Planty-Bonjour puts it in
the above quotation.
Planty-Bonjours observation that Marx says nothing about these
origins, regardless of his intentions, should not be counted as a critical
point. My argument here is that Marx, aware of Engelss efforts apropos
Naturdialektik,171 assumes, like Engels, that the problem of the origins
of nature is best left to empirical, experimental science. To usurp such
aposteriori science through an apriori armchair adjudication of this
problem, even if such armchair adjudication is performed by someone
identified and/or self-identifying as a materialist, would be tantamount
to a methodological relapse into an idealism pretending to be able to
reconstruct all of reality, nature included, from within the concepts of a
thinking detached from the percepts of being(s). Marx, Engels, Lenin, and
their dialectical materialist fellow travelers, given their appreciation of
the natural sciences and the histories of these disciplines, are well aware
of the incomplete, in-progress status of scientific investigations into,
among other matters, the initial, primordial genesis of Natur berhaput
(with this issue continuing to be far from fully resolved by todays
sciences). However, dialectical materialists would rather gamble on
having faith in the potential of scientific explanations for this and other
puzzles than impatiently and preemptively explain things away through
171 Johnston 2018
189 Holding Lenin Together...
hasty recourse to the illusory dogmatic certainties of religious and other
non-naturalist notions. Marx and his dialectical materialist comrades
deliberately leave open the question of the origins of nature precisely
because, as materialists, they understand it as primarily the jurisdiction
of sciences, sciences for which the genesis of the physical universe (or
universes) indeed remains an open question.172
Planty-Bonjours study of Russian Hegelianism up to and
including Lenins readings of Hegel similarly voices misgivings about
the naturalism of Leninist dialectical materialism. Planty-Bonjour
recognizes that, For Lenin, the first foundation is the becoming of
nature.173 Not long after this acknowledgement, he characterizes Lenins
Hegel-inspired positing of an anthropogenetic gradual detachment from
nature as audacious for a materialist, insinuating that this audacity
might represent a backsliding into outright idealism.174 Planty-Bonjours
Volume 4 /
reaction can be rephrased as a question: How, if at all, can one formulate
a thoroughly materialist account of the immanent natural emergence of
(self-)denaturalizing human beings out of pre/non-human nature? Of
course, this is a key, defining question for transcendental materialism
with its dialectical naturalism.
Planty-Bonjour evidently assumes that Hegels manner of asking
and answering this query is thoroughly idealist qua anti-realist and
anti-materialist (an assumption I attempt to demolish elsewhere175).
Additionally, Planty-Bonjours perplexed response to Lenins invocation
of a real-dialectical liberation from naturemore precisely, this would
be the self-liberation of (a part of) nature, namely, natures auto-
denaturalization in and through the activities of minded and like-minded
organisms of a peculiar typeis quite strange given the formers
knowledge of the history of dialectical materialism. One of the red
threads of Hegelian origins running through the materialist musings
of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Bukharin, and various others is the conception
according to which praxis, as human laboring broadly construed, indeed
involves a nature-catalyzed and nature-immanent detachment from
nature.
But, perhaps Planty-Bonjours critical point is that traditional
dialectical materialism fails to elaborate a satisfactorily detailed account
of pre/non-human nature at the level of a sort of Naturphilosophie
172 Johnston 2014b, pp. 222-224
173 Planty-Bonjour 1974, p. 288
174 Ibid., p. 310
175 Johnston 2017 & 2018
190 Holding Lenin Together...
C providing a required but missing theoretical foundation for both C
R R
I dialectical and historical materialism. If this in fact is his claim, I am I
S partially sympathetic to it. Less sympathetically, I try to show on another S
I I
S occasion that various Marxist figures, especially when appropriately S
situated vis--vis a certain Hegel, already furnish much of what is
& &
requisite for such a general theory of nature.176 More sympathetically,
C I admittedly have to engage, on this other occasion, in a great deal of C
R R
I
exegetically charitable reconstruction work in order to extract and (re) I
T assemble a cohesive model of Natur an sich from the texts of Marx and T
I friends.177 I also might be in agreement with Planty-Bonjour in judging I
Q Q
U that Marxist materialists (such as Engels and Lenin at certain moments U
E and Stalin unwaveringly) sometimes have recourse to an image of nature E
/ as a strong totality qua deterministic and lawful organic wholean /
image of nature in relation to which, as per Planty-Bonjours criticism, it
Volume 4 /
Issue 1 truly is difficult to conceive of any actual real detachment in monistic- Issue 1
materialist (rather than dualistic-idealist) terms.
Transcendental materialisms main philosophical contribution to
the tradition of dialectical materialism is nothing other than its idea of
weak nature at stake across the entire arc of the second volume of my
Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism. This idea, I maintain, uniquely
enables the formulation of what Planty-Bonjour worries Lenin wants
but cannot have: a nature-based materialism allowing and accounting
for detachment from nature. In this respect, I leave it open whether
transcendental materialism, with its dialectical naturalism, amounts to
positing the presuppositions of dialectical materialism or represents a
movement of surpassing it. Maybe, considering Hegels Aufhebung, this is
a false dilemma.
176 Johnston 2018
177 Ibid.
191 Holding Lenin Together...
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